


this fever spreading into light

by stellahibernis



Series: an approximation of domesticity [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Post-Canon, Slice of Life, happiness, uninhibited adoration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-23
Updated: 2016-07-23
Packaged: 2018-07-26 06:06:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7563190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stellahibernis/pseuds/stellahibernis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>How many things can you learn about another person in a month? It seems as many as there are grains of sand on a beach. How many new things can you learn in a month about someone you’ve known all your life? When it already seems you know everything there is to know about them?</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>As many as there are stars in the sky.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>There are things Steve knows must have been true before, even if he hadn’t known about them. He’d known about the tenderness of Bucky’s hands from when he treated Steve’s wounds or took care of him when he was sick. He hadn’t known about this other kind of tenderness.</i>
</p>
<p>A perfectly happy day spent doing nothing but each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	this fever spreading into light

**Author's Note:**

> Set about a month after the two previous ones, although this should work as a stand-alone too, not like there is a plot to any of these :D

How many things can you learn about another person in a month? It seems as many as there are grains of sand on a beach. There’s something new every day, every hour, every minute. The learning happens almost unnoticed, at the back of your consciousness, hidden inside daily life and the shadows of the night. It happens and you might suddenly realize how much there actually is that you didn’t know but do now. How many new things can you learn in a month about someone you’ve known all your life? When it already seems you know everything there is to know about them?

As many as there are stars in the sky.

Steve wakes up slowly into the still dark morning. He doesn’t have to check the time to know it’s few minutes to six, because that’s when he tends to regularly wake up these days unless something has been messing with his sleep schedule. They forgot to close the curtains the previous night, and when he raises his head he can see it’s snowing outside. He can also tell the temperature has dropped, and he contemplates on getting up to turn up the heat, but the idea of leaving their nest under the comforter is entirely uninviting. Instead he burrows back into the warmth and settles around Bucky, chest to back. He buries his nose in the long hair and slips his hand under Bucky’s sleep shirt. Steve lets himself drift.

He doesn’t fall back to sleep, not really, maybe dozes a bit here and there. Otherwise he’s content to just lie in the bed, knowing there’s nowhere else either of them needs to be that day. There’s no need to get up, so he just enjoys the warmth and listens to Bucky’s breathing, steadily in and out, deep in dreamless sleep. He lets his hand that rests on Bucky’s stomach move across it, lazy strokes in time to the resting breath.

This is what he knows now; exactly how Bucky’s sleeping body will react to the movement of his hand.

It’s lighter out when Bucky shifts and curls his fingers over Steve’s hand. The metal is slightly cooler than skin but warms up where Bucky is touching Steve. Steve strokes his thumb over Bucky’s stomach and kisses the vertebra at the top of his spine, just a featherlight press of lips. Bucky shifts closer to him, probably still halfway asleep, and Steve moves down, kisses another jut of bone, pressing more now, flicking his tongue over it.

Bucky lets out a breath and squirms a little against Steve who smiles into his skin and lets his hand drift down to brush over Bucky’s already half hard cock. Bucky strains against his hand and huffs a little when Steve moves it away so he can’t get pressure. Steve’s not in the mood for teasing though, not this early in the morning, so he pushes Bucky’s pajama pants down to his thighs and wraps his fingers around Bucky.

He keeps a slow and steady rhythm, his body fitted close against Bucky’s back, lips pressed on the delicate skin on Bucky’s neck. Bucky’s breathing gradually becomes ragged and he reaches back and grabs a hold of Steve’s hip to pull Steve closer against him. It doesn’t take long, first thing in the morning and after waking up already aroused, before Bucky stiffens, his fingers digging into Steve’s hip tight enough to leave bruises, and spills over Steve’s fingers. Steve eases him through it, resting his forehead against the back of Bucky’s head while his breathing evens out. 

It’s so sudden it actually surprises Steve when Bucky turns around and pushes him on his back. Bucky settles over Steve, leaning on his left hand and one knee tucked between Steve’s thighs, pressing against his erection. Bucky’s eyes are bright and clear, as if he has momentarily forgotten he’s not a morning person at all. His hair is all disheveled framing his face, and Steve feels breathless when it suddenly strikes him again that this is his life now. Waking up next to Bucky more often than not is a gift he never dared to even wish for.

Bucky bends down closer to Steve, his breath ghosting over Steve’s lips, and feigning irritation he says, “I was sleeping, you know.”

Steve doesn’t even bother trying to look like he’s sorry, he’s all too happy for that, and he’s sure Bucky can tell from his smile. “I know,” he says, and doesn’t get any further before Bucky kisses him, hard.

Steve threads fingers of one hand in Bucky’s hair and helps Bucky push his pants down with the other. Bucky doesn’t touch him though, not right then. Instead he pulls away from the kiss and holds Steve down by pressing a firm hand on his shoulder when he tries to chase after it. Bucky pauses there above Steve, looking at him with such a fond look in his eyes, and Steve relaxes and just lets him look. Bucky does it sometimes, pauses to look at him in the middle of sex. Steve hasn’t yet figured out what it means, but he lets it happen. An instinct tells him it’s somehow important, and it never lasts long enough actually interrupt anything.

Steve runs his hands along Bucky’s sides when Bucky bends down again, this time bringing their foreheads together, and then finally takes Steve’s cock in his hand. His fingers are deft and warm, and he sets up brisk pace that suits Steve just fine, since he’s very close already. There’s a new kind of intensity for him, to have Bucky’s eyes so close, staring at him dark and pupils blown. Steve feels like he’s drawn into them, and he forgets everything but the fact that Bucky is  _ right there. _ For a moment it doesn’t even matter that Bucky’s touching him, the look is so much more intense, and thus it’s almost a surprise when his orgasm crests over him.

Bucky lowers himself on top of Steve and they lay there until their breathing has evened out and the sticky skin starts to get uncomfortable in the slightly too cool air of their bedroom now that the covers are thrown off. They scramble the rest of the way out of their clothes and Steve remembers to turn up the heat before following Bucky into the bathroom.

It is a funny thing how you can just not see some things, even if they are right there, Steve muses to himself as he stands in the spray with Bucky. When they don’t matter, they might just as well not exist, but if they suddenly start mattering for some reason, it’s like whole new galaxies open ahead of you.

There are things Steve knows must have been true before, even if he hadn’t known about them. He’d known about the tenderness of Bucky’s hands from when he treated Steve’s wounds or took care of him when he was sick. He hadn’t known about this other kind of tenderness that happens just because. Tenderness that exists because they are here, just because Steve’s hair needs washing. The kind of tenderness that isn’t necessary; after all Steve is perfectly capable of washing his own hair. It’s not necessary for Bucky to do it for him, and thus it’s all the more precious.

Steve has always known that Bucky was and is good-looking, he’d heard about it often enough, and it’s not like he didn’t have eyes. It didn’t matter before, it was just something that was true about Bucky. These days Steve finds his attention being arrested by Bucky, by the ease of his movement when he absentmindedly ties his hair back, or the deftness of his wrists when he makes breakfast. Steve has drawn Bucky countless times, used pens and pencils, charcoal and paint, for all kinds of purposes. He drew Bucky because he was there, because Steve needed to practice anatomy, because it was  _ Bucky. _ He’s drawn Bucky because he wasn’t there, and it’s perhaps the most sincere wish that Steve has, that he never has to experience that kind of absence again. He still draws Bucky, for many of the reasons that applied before, but now Steve also draws him because he almost can’t believe it, can’t comprehend the beauty he sees unless he catches it onto the paper.

There is a smile tugging at the corner of Bucky’s mouth, a new kind of smile and Steve doesn’t know what it means yet, but he will find out. Sometimes he thinks he’ll spend the rest of his life grateful for the fact that he got this, another chance with Bucky, the possibility of learning about all the things he never knew or noticed.

Steve lets himself be pushed down onto the couch and pulls Bucky in after him. Bucky settles over him and tugs a pillow down so it’s more comfortable for Steve to lie there. The little things like that, the apparently automatic consideration for his well-being always makes Steve’s heart swell. He doesn’t get too far with that track of thought, because Bucky kisses him, and Steve is all too willing to not think about anything else at all for a while.

There are things Steve didn’t know before, things that he’s learned during the last month. They’re things that technically could have nothing at all to do with Bucky, and yet Steve suspects the only way for him to learn them is due to Bucky. Maybe similar things happen to a lot of people, but these days he suspects that for him they can be true only with Bucky. What he didn’t know before this month was what kissing really can be. That it can be all consuming and enough by itself, not something that is leading to something or other. He didn’t known it doesn’t need to mean anything more than what it means by itself. It doesn’t need to be a promise, because kissing by itself is already enough. He’s learned it over the last weeks, during which he’s spent afternoons, mornings and nights just kissing Bucky, hour after another. It’s happened wherever they ended up being; in bed, leaning to the counter in the kitchen or a window in the studio, or on the couch like just now.

Steve never knew before that he could lose time like this with another person. It’s familiar to him, but it only used to happen while he was painting. It’s exhilarating how the hours stop mattering when all of his consciousness is filled with Bucky, his body and soul and mind. All the conventions and habits might as well not exist when it’s just the two of them. They eat when they are hungry, sleep when they feel like it and touch each other in every way imaginable, any moment they want. Not every day can be like that, but when they can, they stay in the apartment that Steve made into a home for both of them, even though he didn’t really know it at first. Or at least he didn’t admit it to himself, because the wish back then was too fragile to even form into a thought. Now there’s nothing fragile about it, it’s the truth, stronger than the vibranium of his shield.

Their home is their safe place, and Steve knows every inch of it, and yet it’s somehow made new when something unexpected or wonderful happens. He’s lying completely naked on his back on the area rug by the windows. Bucky is straddled over him, riding him slow and thorough. Steve has his hands on Bucky’s hips, steadying him but letting Bucky choose the pace. They’ve been at it for a while now, the setting sun is coloring Bucky’s skin in reds and oranges and Steve thinks he may never have been as beautiful as he is right then. Bucky’s eyes are hooded even while he keeps his gaze on Steve, strands of hair have come loose and they stick to the skin on his face and neck. Steve can’t stop looking at him, or touching him. He runs his fingers up Bucky’s chest, brushing over a nipple as he goes and then follows the line of metal and skin. Bucky leans in to kiss him with lips that are red and swollen because they’ve done nothing but kiss the whole day. He still tastes like the chocolate pastries they had earlier.

Bucky pulls away and finds his rhythm again, steadying himself with a hand on Steve’s chest and rotating his hips in a way he knows makes Steve react. There is a familiar hint of smirk when Steve’s fingers dig at his hip. Steve bends his knees to get better leverage and starts meeting Bucky with slight upward thrusts, and it doesn’t take long before Bucky’s breathing is ragged and the muscles on his thighs strain against the effort. Steve grabs a hold of Bucky’s cock, pulls at it in time of his thrusts, and finally he gets Bucky to loosen enough to moan. Bucky isn’t loud at all usually, and every sound that Steve manages to coax out of him feels like another gift. 

The sun has fully set and Bucky’s skin is painted in shades of blue when he comes, his back arching and eyes rolling back. Steve gently tumbles him down on his back while he’s still reeling from the orgasm. Bucky is pliable under his hands when Steve hooks one arm under his leg and pushes in again. He works back up the pace, near climax himself, and it only takes a few minutes before he comes with Bucky’s whispered encouragements in his ear, burying his face into the crook of Bucky’s neck.

A part of Steve wants to stay there forever, except he knows Bucky’s leg is probably pinned, and they’d soon get cold anyway. But the best thing about days like this is that even if you have to move away from one thing that feels good, there is always another. Steve can’t become addicted to substances anymore, but now he thinks that this right here is probably his addiction. Not that he intends to do anything about it.

They take another shower and eat, and then finally crawl back into their bed, into a nest made out of the comforter and pillows. Bucky pulls Steve closer to him, and Steve rests his head on Bucky’s shoulder, slides a hand up his arm until it’s inside the sleeve of his t-shirt. They forgot to close the curtains again, but Steve’s not getting up anymore.

**Author's Note:**

> Apparently I actually managed a full on happy thing without referring to all the complications, who'd have thought.
> 
> I'm also on [tumblr](http://stellahibernis.tumblr.com/).


End file.
